The United Nations General Assembly has designated 11 December, from 2003 onwards, as “International Mountain Day”. FAO is the U.N. Organization mandated to lead the observance of International Mountain Day each year.

In the follow-up to Rio +20 we would like to continue underlining how the benefits derived from mountain regions are essential for sustainable development. Yet while mountain goods and services are vital to achieve “green growth”, there are growing threats to their sustainable supply.

In this context, we would like to propose, Mountains: Key to a Global Green Economy as this year’s International Mountain Day theme. The focus would be on celebrating how mountains are crucial in moving the world towards a greener economy and on drawing attention to their generally sustainable and low-emission production models and to their potential as areas of green investment.

We believe this theme could help in raising awareness on why mountains matter for a green economy and global sustainable development, and how the new opportunities should bring benefits to highland and lowland communities rather than contribute to the degradation of mountain socio-ecosystems.

Additional ideas about other themes are welcome; please feel free to send us your suggestions and we will take these into consideration. As always, members and countries are free to focus on other issues that might be more relevant to their priorities.

In the coming months, we will be preparing communication materials in all the 6 UN languages which will be posted on our website and distributed. We will also shortly issue a call for entries for any contributions you might want to make to these materials.

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Started in year 2010, ‘Climate Himalaya’ initiative has been working on Mountains and Climate linked issues in the Himalayan region of South Asia. In the last five years this knowledge sharing portal has become one of the important references for the governments, research institutions, civil society groups and international agencies, those have work and interest in the Himalayas. The Climate Himalaya team innovates on knowledge sharing, capacity building and climatic adaptation aspects in its focus countries like Bhutan, India, Nepal and Pakistan. Climate Himalaya’s thematic areas of work are mountain ecosystem, water, forest and livelihood. Read>>

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Climate Himalaya team is not responsible for the content taken from external websites. It is a voluntary initiative of PRAKRITI group that has registration number- 401/1998-99/11906D (10/2014-2015) with Government of Uttarakhand in India. The initiative is financially supported by PRAKRITI group.